Friday, April 8, 2011

Future Cleric tanking plans

As I said before there is some disagreement on the Rift forums and elsewhere with my presumption that shields are the lesser choice for tanking clerics.  My plan is to keep my non-shield spec for soloing and switching to a shield friendly spec for instances and rifts.  My cleric is 29 now and I've stuck with the game suggested combination of justicar/druid/shaman.  I'm going to try and show what my spec will end up looking like as I level up with both roles.

Lvl 20 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00ran.AuMo0G.x.0c




Lvl 30 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00ran.EuMo0eczo.xM.0c




Lvl 40 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00ran.EuMooeckRR.xVbo.0c



By the time I reach level 38 I am required to start taking shield based talents to stay in Justicar, so by this I take it that I am supposed to have picked up a shield by this point.  None of the abilities post 37 ( Just Defense, Resplendent Embrace or Doctrine of Authority ) require a shield but they do seem to be survivability abilities that might be a mistake to skip, at least end game.  I held out and instead spent some points in my DPS trees to get to 40, assuming I would have to be shield spec'd by 50.  My extra points in Druid get me Fae Hammer to help with mana issues, I picked up Slumber to help with mob control

Lvl 50 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00ran.EuRsqeekRR.xVoo.0c


So after 40 if I wanted to stay full Justicar, and I'm not saying that's the best choice, I need to take shield talents.  If I'm taking shield talents then it only makes sense to pick up a shield.  In some of my research I've seen specs that don't bring Justicar all the way up to 51, they stop at 38 and put points into Shaman and their third soul is Inquisitor.  I'll have to look at this once I get to that level.  Here is a link to a forum post about exactly this sort of spec ( http://knightsofshadow.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2584 ).

Let me know what you think or what you've found out, I'm always willing to listen.

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